


Cura Deum Di Sint

by Zabbers



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:20:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, to save someone, you have to kill them. But when that someone is Jack Harkness, what does that even mean?</p><p>Ianto is stuck in the woods in a storm when Jack falls out of the sky. He's battered and in pain. Helping him might be more than Ianto can bear to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cura Deum Di Sint

They had rented a cabin, once, a cottage like in the old stories, all raw wood walls and thatched roof, as though it had been fresh-chopped out of the forest. It had been the first time Ianto had ever slept above an earth floor, the first time he'd lit a pot-bellied stove. The windows were milky and rain-streaked, and overnight they ran out of paraffin for the lamp. In the morning Ianto made powdered eggs and hot cocoa, and he and Lisa sat outside on a fallen log, watching dew melt from the dawn-wet trees.

~

Owen had not believed him when he'd put in the holiday request. None of them had. But when Ianto made it clear he was in earnest, Gwen shushed Owen, eyes blatantly curious, and said Ianto probably had months of leave accumulated, much less a week. It was true, and Torchwood simply had to do without him for a while.

The train to England, bearing him steadily through the countryside, out of Glamorgan, should have felt like an escape, but he was too tied to Cardiff, he had left too many things under the Bay. Even Lisa, in life so free, unholdable, lay trapped in her frozen limbo in Torchwood's crypt, a thread pulling him back, reminding him his whole life was in that damp temple of concrete, and couldn't be otherwise.

After he arrived, he hiked through the forest, all too aware it was more like the old stories than he had imagined. But no grey-skinned creatures peered at him from the trees; he didn't hear the sound of rapidly flapping wings. The faeries, it seemed, really had been appeased.

He was haunted by other things, though, the memory of a laugh, the remembered feeling of Lisa's hand in his, cool skin later blemished by hot metal. Ianto was here for her today, but he was able to admit, finally, that it might even more be for himself.

It was very green in this wood, and Ianto walked under birches, oak, linden, ash, to find the cabin again. He set his pack by the bed, opened up the shutters, and poured himself a cup of coffee from his vacuum flask.

~

Long after the sun rose the next morning, Ianto went looking for the spot. Of course, it was Lisa who had found it, a secluded clearing up a hill with velvety grass, and sunlight that slanted through translucent leaves, the whole thing, impossibly, even greener than the trees and undergrowth around it. And a view, through a filigree of vegetation, of the valley below. Torchwood might lay claim to Lisa's body, but her soul--in a way, he was bringing her here to rest.

He picked his way through the bracken, scratching his shins on the stray branches.

Since Torchwood encountered those malevolent faeries, Ianto had wondered whether this was one of their places, so magical it had seemed. But infallible recollection revealed no signs of them, no stone circles, no flower petals, no unusual weather. And research showed this to be a very new forest, replanted only recently on protected parkland. So from that, at least, he was safe.

Through the final barrier of foliage, and Ianto expected to find the little glade much as he and Lisa had left it. What he saw, instead, brought his heart to his throat.

Under the canopy of trees, in the very center of the verdant circle, was a disordered pile of blue planks.

~

His first thought was to be angry at whoever had been so inconsiderate as to litter this place, Lisa's place. His second, more rational thought, was to wonder how they had managed to bring all that wood here in the first place, and why. Then he went right in to begin moving it away.

He'd come to lay Lisa to rest, and he would be damned if he would do so with all this rubbish marring its pristine perfection. Close inspection revealed the scrap lumber to be splintered panels of something that must have once been quite tall, now scattered in a heap as though someone had flung it to earth from above, like a god. The trees, however, were quite unmoved; had whatever this was been smashed elsewhere and brought here? Not a faerie place, then, but perhaps dangerous nonetheless, a hangout of gangs or hooligans.

The panels were surprisingly smooth, splintered only where they had snapped, and the paint work in very good condition, as though they had never been outdoors before. The primary blue panels were also quite dry, which meant they could not have been here long--all the week before it had rained, and the weather forecasters predicted more rain the following week. But Ianto had seen no sign that anybody had been through this way in recent times.

It was all very peculiar, and Ianto wished he had thought to return to the cabin for a pair of latex gloves, and perhaps his gun. Funny how quickly it had become a natural, even a necessary thing. He worked steadily, though he made slow progress, carefully hauling first one half, then the other of the topmost segment of debris, and removing them all the way through the bracken to the actual path.

It was when he returned for the next panel that he heard the groans. A faint, male voice, coming from under the wreckage, just once and then gone, but enough to spur Ianto to action.

He tossed wood aside like it was fibreboard, no longer caring where in the glade it went or how he scratched his fingers on the jagged breaks.

_Quickly. Quickly!_

"Are you there? Hello?" Ianto called as he worked. The man was at the very bottom of the woodpile, trapped under the panels that suddenly seemed far too heavy, to take to long to move. Ianto grunted with effort as he flung one away, using his body as a pivot.

"I'm here; I'll get you out of there!" he promised, though he heard nothing in reply.

And then, finally, finally, he was through to the last piece. Ianto pulled it away to free the victim's head, hoping fervently that he was still alive.

But of course he was still alive.

The victim was Jack.

~

By the time Ianto saw who it was under the wreckage, Jack was unconscious. Ianto touched trembling fingers to Jack's cheek; it was clammy and his face was pallid, but his skin didn't have that grey, clay-like quality it had had when he'd been laid out on a slab in the morgue, so long ago. He was chilled, but he wasn't cold.

By the time Ianto freed the rest of Jack's body, he was drifting back into consciousness, and as Ianto made a cursory assessment of Jack's injuries, trying not to notice the torn, soiled clothing, the greatcoat probably damaged beyond repair--let that be the only thing, Ianto prayed fleetingly--he found himself suddenly looking into two clouded blue eyes.

He paused, frozen in that moment as though Jack had fixed him with the usual disquieting stare. Jack's mouth and throat worked, but no sound came out. Ianto hovered there, hand floating above Jack's chest, adrenaline turning his thoughts into a blind white blur, and it was only when he blinked himself out of his stupor that he realized his own mouth had been hanging open and he had been holding his breath.

As far as Ianto could tell, there wasn't much of Jack that wasn't broken in some way, but he risked, very gently, slipping his hand into Jack's. Perhaps this was one part of him that had been spared, or perhaps he was too far gone for any more pain to register, but it seemed to comfort him; it comforted them both.

Moving him was going to be problematic, but it was clear to Ianto that trying to call for help was not a good strategy; Jack couldn't go to hospital, not like this and not ever. He was not--quite--human enough. There would be questions.

Ianto had questions as well, but he had long since learned that asking them would get him exactly nowhere.

He did have the equivalent of a paramedic's training, they all did, and he had rather more experience applying it than he would have liked. This would simply have to go on the list as one more instance. Ianto fashioned a sort of stretcher-backboard from some of the discarded wood, muttered yet another quick prayer (Jack, had he been able, would have scoffed at Ianto's sudden display of faith, but what was Torchwood if not one long leap of faith?), and eased the prone form onto the flat surface.

By the time he had accomplished this, Jack had blacked out again.

~

He remained unconscious for the duration of the slow, arduous journey back to the cottage. He was blissfully unaware when Ianto moved him onto the double bed. He only woke hours later when Ianto was heating up canned beans on the wood stove.

He woke, and then he threw up in the bed, and only quick action on Ianto's part kept him from suffocating himself.

"I suppose that meant 'no more beans'," Ianto observed afterwards.

~

Twilight came not much later, and though Ianto watched Jack in the diffuse illumination of the paraffin lamp, it was not really bright enough for a more thorough examination, and so it was not until the sun had found its footing many cups of rather bad coffee later that he could truly see the extent and details of Jack's injuries.

Ianto had had all night to work himself into a quiet mess. Anxiety had knotted itself with the harsh coffee into a tight twist in his gut, and the incredulous thing that may have been joy was tinged with a bright, hysterical edge: Jack. It was Jack. Jack was here.

He didn't question the serendipity that had brought them both to this place, this time. A long-ago holiday, a need for remembrance, navigational error? And though he wanted to, he didn't question the forces that had abandoned Jack here so cruelly battered, like so much rubbish.

He'd long since stopped questioning Jack's original departure.

Jack was here _now_.

Some time into his examination, he was so engrossed in a particularly nasty fracture of the tibia that he didn't notice eyes opening or breath changing, didn't notice anything until a weak voice croaked out his name. Then he was responding in a flash, suddenly shy about the shirt and trousers he'd had to cut away, fetching a glass of water from the faucet, adding what painkillers he could ration out from the first-aid kit.

After that, Jack smiled, and he closed his eyes, and slept.

~

For the next twenty-four hours, he was in and out of consciousness. Sometimes it was sleep, and sometimes it was a deeper oblivion. The paltry doses weren't nearly enough, and Ianto wished more than once that he had access to the medicines he'd stolen from Owen's stores for Lisa. He knew, better than most, what things might work, and what each tight expression meant, both waking and in slumber.

He hated this helplessness.

Two things happened at the twenty-fifth hour: first, the sky opened like a wound, and suddenly they were caught in the most torrential downpour he had seen all summer. Second, Jack woke, and this time, not only stayed awake but demonstrated a lucidity that said he was through the initial difficulty. Pain broke, like a fever, and for a while at least, Jack would be present in body and in mind.

Ianto was watching the rain when it happened.

"That sounds like some storm." Jack's voice was stronger, though perhaps more harsh.

It didn't need saying: weather this bad meant there would be no leaving the cabin, even if Jack could be moved.

"There might even be flash flooding," Jack continued gamely. "High winds, fallen trees..."

"It'll pass," Ianto said, and his own voice seemed gravelly, unused.

"No, it won't."

He wondered if it would be possible to set the breaks himself.

"Ianto."

And whether there were sterile instruments so he could stop the internal bleeding.

"Admit it."

"Storms always pass."

How was it Jack, who was the one needing care, could sound so gentle and so stern all at once? "That's not what we're talking about."

"What would you have me do?" Ianto's bewilderment was genuine. "Just--give up?"

"Yes." That simple. "Like you gave her up. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

Ianto stared down at Jack. "How did you know that?"

And despite everything, there was the old grin, as familiar as his own face in the mirror. "Let's just say you're going to tell me."

"Is that how you wound up here?" Ianto asked, and before Jack could answer, "This is different. She died."

"And I'm dying."

Ianto recoiled.

"You know I am. You know--" Jack grimaced, gasped. "You know I hurt. It'd be better for me to die. Less cruel."

No one else had accused him of cruelty before--only Jack, and his own guilty self. And it was true, though Ianto had forgotten: he'd seen it before, Jack would come back, good as new, to tend his mysteries, to wait for visiting deities.

As though nothing had ever happened. As though nothing ever mattered.

"Ianto."

Jack's voice commanded him, his eyes held him steadily.

"Kill me."

~

The gun still felt strange in Ianto's hand, heavy and foreign and cold. But the metal soon warmed in his grasp, and his fingers were learning the shapes and patterns of the polymer grip.

He had pointed this gun at Jack before.

He'd pointed it at Jack for Lisa's sake, and it was on her now he called for the strength to do this awful thing.

He thumbed the safety down.

His mouth was dry and sour.

He flexed his fingers around the grip nervously. With his left hand, he held Jack's, so they were entwined like Baucis and Philemon, in death rewarded not for an act of faith, but for one of ignorance. Jack's expression was almost blissful, though his other hand was clenched into a tight fist around the bedsheets.

Ianto hooked his finger into the trigger guard. He breathed in.

~

He couldn't do it.

~

Flipping the safety back on, he pointed the gun away, his whole body shaking with the effort not to, to weep or scream or bury his head in Jack's pillow, the taste of bile on his tongue. But then trembling turned to shuddering, and he looked at Jack again, whose mouth contorted comically in an effort not to smirk, and Ianto felt an elastic vibration begin in his diaphragm, and then they were giggling, snickering, laughing hysterically as though it was the funniest thing in the world, Jack high pitched and intercut with wheezing coughs, Ianto halfway to tears, and he wasn't sure if it was relief or disappointment or fear, but it was impossible not to go on, laughing and laughing.

"I really thought I could this time," Ianto babbled between gasps. "I really did."

"It--" Giggle. "It's probably for the better that you didn't." Cough, wince. "I'm not sure it would work anyway. I don't think I can come back anymore."

Ianto shut his mouth, suddenly sober. "What?"

"I didn't want to tell you in case it stopped you." Jack's grip tightened around Ianto's.

But he turned away, slid his hand out of the desperate fingers to release the magazine from his gun, to catch it, cold and hard, to disengage the safety and recover the unspent round. All three he placed, conspicuously, deliberately, on the little folding table that served as a nightstand.

"But since you couldn't do it either way..." Jack trailed off.

Ianto, still looking at the pistol, the magazine, the cartridge, said, dully, "You didn't want to tell me."

"If I had, would you even have tried?"

"You didn't want to tell me."

"Would you?"

"No."

"There you go." The rain beat down like thrown stones. "We both know I'm not going to make it. Or I'll make it and it won't be worth it."

"We've found technologies," Ianto mumbled. "Owen--"

"Owen would tell you the same." Jack sighed. "I'm not like other people, Ianto; I'm not afraid. I've been there, in the dark. And I've had a long, long life. I asked the Doctor to put me right so I could come back, so that I could die, when it was time."

 _It isn't_ , Ianto thought stubbornly. "The Doctor." It was, at once, a question and a statement of opinion.

Jack grinned now. "Don't tell me you worked for Torchwood this long, you were at Canary Wharf, and you didn't recognize the shell of the TARDIS?"

Ianto didn't need reminding. He had been at Canary Wharf. "What happened, Jack?"

Something different clouded the blue eyes then that might have been uncertainty. Doubt.

"I don't know." His brow furrowed. "We were flying. A-and then I was falling. And I hit the ground and something hit me, and they were gone. The Doctor. The TARDIS. Again. Everyone, gone."

 _But I'm here_ , Ianto thought.

To his surprise, that was exactly what Jack said.

~

As the storm raged on in its steady, English way, Ianto pretended that things would turn out fine. He heated soup for Jack and made sandwiches for himself and cleaned the filth from Jack's skin with a washcloth and a light touch, read to him in the daylight from the book he'd brought and talked to him long into the night to keep him distracted.

When Jack was awake, so was Ianto, and often when he wasn't as well. He spoke while Jack slept, knowing the sound of his voice soothed him, telling him story after story of Torchwood after he'd gone, of Owen's half-finished projects (bio-hazards, every one) and Tosh's newest discoveries (especially the ones that exploded) and Gwen's attempt to maintain good cheer (hazardous in its own way); of how they'd looked for him and worried about him, how in the end Ianto sat alone in the Hub at night, waiting; how Jack never came.

When Jack was lucid, Ianto kept to the more general tales: adventures, outrageous things that could only happen in Torchwood Three. Jack never broke in with his own stories, not a word about his escapades with the Doctor nor any of the old favourites about amorous liaisons gone awry or amusingly odd alien misunderstandings. His stories had always had punchlines, but it seemed now the punchline was him; he was making up for his stolen years with one agonised week.

Still, the storm went on, and when Ianto ventured out during a break in the deluge, with the rain merely heavy rather than torrential, he found a river had usurped the narrow road, washing out a bridge along the way. Even solo he almost slipped and fell into the rapids; grown men perished this way all the time, he knew. With Jack as well, he would never be able to cross, and the likelihood of rescue services making it in was now virtually nil.

Still, Ianto talked, and still Jack listened.

He was subdued. Now and then--more often than Ianto had hoped--pain deepened the lines on Jack's face, and Ianto scrambled to find something, anything, that would help.

And then, as he knew they would, the medications ceased to have any effect at all.

~

Jack was crying, writhing, crying out, and there was nothing Ianto could do about any of it.

Almost nothing.

They both knew it, with Ianto's eyes fixed on Jack's and Jack's darting to the gun still resting on the nightstand, where Ianto had put them days ago, unable to touch them even to hide them away, Ianto was paralyzed, like an animal.

Jack raged at Ianto, targeting his guilt, his love, ultimately simply trying to goad Ianto, to make him angry enough, as if even his desperation could blind him to the knowledge that Ianto could never be angry enough.

"I'm the one who decided your girlfriend wasn't worth saving, Ianto," he snarled, eyes darting to Ianto and away again, over and over. "The one who fired the first shot. The bullet you hoped was aimed at you because then you wouldn't have to finally watch her die. You're a coward, Ianto Jones. A snivelling, pathetic doormat of a coward; you think you're stoic and brave, but you're afraid to speak for yourself. It's always someone else, you're always hiding. The more desperate the cause the better, because then you'll never achieve it, then you'll never have to face your own, sorry life."

Anguish twisted his features. "That's why you started following me around. That's why you serve. Why you tell yourself you're in love with me. How safe, how easy to subsume yourself in someone else's purpose and pretend it's yours. To be used. You've always done it, and you're still doing it now. You little cunt."

Ianto stood mutely through it all, his lips tight and his fists flexing helplessly, his face wet. It was like the storm had snaked into the cottage and struck them both, two tangled beings with lightning in their hearts.

It left them burnt and cold all at once, and finally, Ianto turned away. He walked outside. He stood and let the rain fall on him until he couldn't tell he'd been weeping anymore, until he could pretend, just for a heartbeat, that if he could drown out the noises of Jack's suffering, he could silence its echo in his mind.

He struggled to Lisa's clearing, where the shell of the TARDIS remained, and sat down in the mud, feeling broken.

But no one came to patch him together again. So he put himself together and went back.

Inside the cabin, Jack had passed into a sort of waking hallucination, and was quietly panting while he followed something Ianto couldn't see with very wide eyes, his head turned from the table.

Ianto pulled off his jumper and his mud-saturated trousers and tried to dry himself, to warm up against the paraffin lamp resting almost on his bare thigh; what wood for the stove had been kept indoors had long since been used up, and the rest was outside, too wet to light. He shivered where he sat like a frightened dog.

In time, he, too, drifted, his thoughts mostly blank and circular, and full of the sense memory of long grey nights hidden in the cold lower levels of the base in Cardiff, the scent of slowly rusting metal and corroding flesh colouring the long exhale of the cyber ventilator.

He'd spent a lot of that time listening for Jack's footstep, picturing him bursting in on the terrible discovery, imagining Jack's voice on his headset calling him away. So when Jack spoke, a bare intimation of a sound, a name, a calm request, Ianto didn't at first recognise it as real.

Then he recalled where he was.

~

Jack was drenched, so Ianto wiped him down and, rinsing the cloth in cool water, put it on Jack's forehead.

"Feels good," Jack whispered.

Ianto nodded. He re-dressed Jack's wounds with the remaining fresh bandages. He tossed the old ones, soaked, into the overflowing bin. He washed his hands and then came back to take his place by the bed. He stroked Jack's hair, almost absently.

"I'm cold," Jack said.

Ianto pulled up one of the blankets, tucked it in around Jack's shoulders.

"I'm still cold," Jack said.

Ianto got up and brought the lamp over; it was all they had left, holding back the darkness, protecting their worn hearts. It was not nearly enough. He was weary. He considered smashing up a chair for firewood.

"Come lie with me," Jack said.

 _But I'll hurt you_ , Ianto thought. _And I'm cold too. I'd be useless._

"You won't hurt me.

"Please."

So Ianto, for the first time, climbed into the little bed beside Jack and fitted himself carefully around him. By now he knew every break and wound in Jack's body, and by twisting and stretching his own, Ianto found a way to hold Jack, to try to warm him.

Jack smiled, sighing softly, a contented exhalation.

It was his contentment that frightened Ianto.

Jack's skin felt wrong against Ianto's bare legs, and he seemed...small, as though losing all that blood had deflated him. Through his t-shirt and shorts, Ianto could feel the sticky cold of Jack's body, the way he quivered, the way his muscles tightened at waves of pain, the way he didn't try to control any of it.

Jack smiled; he was content.

He had been begging, demanding, ordering Ianto to end it, and now, he was content, and no, no, no, no, no.

Jack was always leaving, and Ianto thought, no, not this time, no more.

"No what?" Jack asked sleepily, and Ianto hadn't known he'd spoken aloud.

"Nothing," Ianto lied.

The eyes that sought his were clearer than he had seen since this had all begun, what felt like far longer than a week ago.

"The thing is," Jack said with great effort. "The thing is, the Doctor never said. He never said whether he'd got round to fixing me yet. I don't know."

Ianto forced his eyes shut against his last tears, and when he'd blinked them away, Jack was gone again, exhausted--snoring.

~

He woke with a sharp crick in his neck and pins and needles all along the side he'd slept on. He woke. Sometime after Jack had fallen asleep, he had as well. He woke disoriented, the clouded sky giving little clue as to the time. Jack was watching him with something like tenderness in the curve of his lip and the angle of his eyebrows, and Ianto thought that it was he who was hurt, who was dying, not Jack, but of course, he was wrong.

Pain, their fierce familiar, was a creature that waited just beneath the surface; a moment later it surged upward and snapped its crooked jaw.

And Ianto understood that, while sleeping, he had made his decision. Even mortals, poor and humble, could offer something. Precious wine. Their only goose. An impossible act.

He knew what to do. He reached for the pistol. It had not, in these days on the table, gathered dust. Magazine slid home. Safety disengaged. Slide racked. Once again, he put his finger on the trigger. Once again, he breathed in.

Jack's eyes shot open. His hand was suddenly firm around Ianto's, a quick squeeze and release.

"No, Ianto," he said. "Not you." He took the gun, thumbed the safety. And then he pushed Ianto out of bed. He pushed.

"Go," he said.

And Ianto, reflexively obedient, coward, no god, stumbled blindly out into the night, where he turned and leaned hard against the rough wet wood, too tired to sob, holding his breath and listening, listening for the weapon that had failed Lisa, the one that might save Jack, that would save him either way.

The shot rang out, shockingly clear, and Ianto realized in the silence that the rain had stopped.

He turned, and through the canopy of leaves, linden and oak, he saw sky.

He could even see the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal, 17 May 2007. Thanks to chikkiboo and 3weasel for betaing. Let cares of gods be gods.


End file.
